Solving Critical Design Problems: Theory and Practice
Tania Allen
Top 10 Best Quotes
“The paradox of impact is that while design shapes the world in profound ways, it is also being shaped by the world. Design as a process necessarily interfaces with many other systems to shape and redefine the world and our human experience within it. Designers and design in general is, however, uniquely situated to be critical mediators between the various entities, forces, and agendas that are constantly at work in developing the future that we collectively and individually want.”
“One of the ways that designers can challenge themselves to think about their work differently is to look outside of design to ways that other disciplines research, evaluate, and interpret their work.”
“Much as participatory design and placemaking was a reaction to the lack of citizen involvement in the planning process, the history of incremental city design was a reaction to the utopian master plan that dictated whole scale redevelopment in favor of an incremental approach that gradually affected the status quo. As a theory of policymaking, incrementalism was first introduced by Charles Lindblom in the 1950s.”
“...for design to truly address issues of sustainability necessitates a change in how we define innovation, and move beyond what we can do to what we should do.”
“What the map offers is a critical use of elements like scale, orientation, organization, and framing to help us make meaning of abstract data, but also persuade us of a certain truth.”
“One simple thing that we might do in the research process is a simple renaming of the user as a reader or interpreter, which emphasizes the interpretive nature of design interactions.”
“Once designers start to look for patterns, they start noticing them everywhere. So, the goal of teaching students how to engage is design research is as much about verifying the validity of those patterns as it is about identifying them in the first place.”
“Google Maps is devised as a crutch to help us navigate the world in an easier way, but by extension the same technology prevents us from understanding the world in a holistic way, or thinking critically about the route that we should take, or even from the route that might be most enjoyable.”
“For designers to understand their work as part of a dialogue influences the design output in much more nuanced ways, and relieves the designer from the burden of needing to control every aspect of the experience.”
“Dewey argued that art was really an experience—one that was more like a dialogue between the viewer and the composition. As an “expressive object” art didn’t state a meaning, but rather expressed it. In this expression, there are a host of interrelated components that are all contributing to its meaning. The viewer does not come to the object as a “blank slaDewey argued that art was really an experience—one that was more like a dialogue between the viewer and the composition. As an “expressive object” art didn’t state a meaning, but rather expressed it. In this expression, there are a host of interrelated components that are all contributing to its meaning. The viewer does not come to the object as a “blank slate” but with previous experiences that affect the way that they respond to and interact with the piece, and contributes to their understanding of the artist’s intentionste” but with previous experiences that affect the way that they respond to and interact with the piece, and contributes to their understanding of the artist’s intentions.”
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Book Keywords:
design, reader, patterns, urban-design, choices, designers, mapping, architecture, experience, art, users, choice, meaning, nuance, framing, sustainability, expression, teaching, mediator, truth, incrementalism
